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Thursday, November 29, 2012

scrappy strategies for christmas cards {lily bee}

We're having a week full of Christmas Card inspiration on the Lily Bee blog this week, and I was up yesterday (along with fellow design team member Andrea Budjack) sharing a few cards that look suspiciously like miniature versions of layouts I've made in the past.

Cards are not my strong suit, but ever since I switched over to scrapping square cards (mostly 6x6) instead of A4 and started treating them like small scrapbook pages rather than cards I've been a lot more comfortable making them. For this card set I even opted to use a photo as the main focal point- very helpful since Lily Bee doesn't have large chipboard or die cut pieces in their collections.

Each card has the same basic structure as most of my layouts- little strips of paper across the top and bottom and a photo matted with vellum and popped up on dimensional adhesive. From there, I went back through my albums to identify some of my favorite strategies for adding more paper and embellishment and came up with three different "layouts" to work with. The card above uses the first layout strategy- punches or die cuts loosely (very loosely, in this case) arranged in a diagonal line across the page. You can see examples of this type of page here and here.

My second card uses one of my favorite "messy" embellishing strategies- sewing several rough circles and then scattering punched shapes and small items like bling and buttons around the stitches. This is a fairly easy-to-spot strategy that I try not to use it too often on my pages so it doesn't get old, but you can see it in two layout examples here and here.

The last card below shows one of my most commonly used layout strategies (so common that there are four examples- here, here, here, and here)- adding one or more pennant-shaped strips of paper behind the photo. Here I've layered up three horizontal strips of varying widths, but you could do this with more or fewer strips and also switch the strips up to sit vertically.

I don't normally make the Christmas cards that I send out this year, but I do make a few special ones for friends and family to use as wrapping for gift cards, magazine subscription gift notes, and other flat items to give them something pretty to open on Christmas Day. These cards have been added to that stack for this year and will be in the happy hands of gift recipients in less than a month now!

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